Software licensing and pricing models are generally not lauded as intuitive, simple, or user-friendly. The value of a software license can be estimated based upon multiple factors including a number of users, a size of the system measured in terms of a number of processors, etc. A typical scenario for licensing software includes tying the software to a particular client computer and confirming a unique identifier (e.g., MAC address) associated with that computer.
As virtualized environments become more important, traditional approaches to licensing begin to fail. Unfortunately, many suppliers have chosen to continue offering only restrictive licenses or conditions of use. However, the restrictions that make sense in a physical world, do not necessarily translate to a virtual or cloud environment. For example, in virtualized and cloud computing environments, it is very hard to tie the use of a specific instance of a software tool or application to a customer as software instances run in an abstracted environment that can grow or shrink as needed. This stresses many suppliers licensing and pricing models.